By 2021, you are most likely leveraging at least one social media platform to grow your business. Whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or beyond, your internal marketing efforts already consider the tremendous capabilities of such applications, but we urge you to consider: are you harnessing the full power of platforms available?

This year, we’re urging business owners to explore digging deeper into the world of likes, posts, comments, and shares to tap into greater brand awareness, authority, personality, reputation management, and even lead generation. We’ve urged our clients to consider social media services in the past, but the way we all do business has changed in a nearly post-pandemic world. As such, social media has become an absolute necessity for optimal healthy growth.

Let’s take a closer look, with 5 powerful reasons to prioritize social media efforts for your business in 2021.

Boost Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is an often overlooked aspect of business growth and success, but the extent to which a potential customer recognizes a brand should never be ignored. While not all businesses should expect to garner massive awareness around a particular product, name, or service, aspects of awareness are attainable and essential. Those can include:

• Potential customers being familiar with what your business or brand is known for
• Potential customers being able to assess and understand offerings quickly (perhaps based on pre-established awareness)
• Potential customers and established customers choosing your brand or business over the competition based on awareness / established trust / assumed experience
• Positive association or connotation with your business or brand name (not measurable per se but often buoyed through positive reviews, sharing testimonials, and pattern of positive word of mouth)

Brand awareness can’t be ignored. Neither can social media platforms positively impact such a marketing goal: in fact, social media is often synonyms with increased brand awareness for marketers. You’ll want to ensure your business has a healthy online presence to promote brand awareness. That can look like:

• An active and up-to-date profile on the platform best suited for your business and audience
• Clear social content with accompanying visuals as needed
• Consistent updates, linking back to your website
• Content with strong CTA’s that entice action and further communication

Ultimately, social media platforms allow your business to reach a wider audience, engaging consumers you might not otherwise have connected with. Your presence online will help establish your brand or business with repeated exposure, increasing word-of-mouth recommendations, boosting customer loyalty, and leading to other benefits that include:

• Customer recognition
• Credibility
• Inspired confidence
• Clear consistency
• Attracting talent
• Show shared values

By establishing and maintaining a healthy social media presence, you directly impacted the awareness both potential and established customers may have of your business, brand product, or service. When searching for an expert or offering, most potential customers will take to social media and search engines in tandem – assessing if the business they’ve found is active, up-to-date, and even trustworthy. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to turn that awareness into an actionable engagement.

Establish Brand Personality

Did you know that 94% of customers are likely to show loyalty to a brand that offers complete transparency? This hard-to-ignore statistic was pulled from a consumer behavior study that included 2,000 respondents – suggesting that people are significantly more loyal to brands and businesses that actively showcase transparency and honesty as pillars of their brand personality. Moreover, another study found that 81% of consumers buy based on trust. One undeniable factor that can have a profound impact on both findings? Effectively showcasing brand personality. Social media is one of the most widely accepted – and sought out – ways to establish a brand personality. Let’s take a closer look.

Once your profile and account have been established on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram – you can begin to develop brand personality by:

• Creating content that reflects your brand’s tone (think: reassuring, friendly, warm, professional) and ideal persona (consider: who am I writing this post for, and how would they want their perfect brand or business to speak to them?)
• Showcasing personality (consider: humor, values, mission) and even emotion in your posts and stories (passion for product, dedication to craft and service, etc.)
• Communicating what your brand or business stands for (consider: core values, area of expertise, experience)
• Highlighting branded testimonials or reviews that speak to the level of excellence, including warm thanks to showcase customer appreciation
• Showcasing team updates, images, or even ‘behind-the-scenes.’
• Celebrating social media holidays where applicable or even internal birthdays to highlight personality and a true ‘personable’ approach

Ultimately, establishing a brand personality through any social media platform will take some time. Still, each platform itself offers unique, native components you can take advantage of to highlight exactly what sets your business apart.

Manage Your Reputation

Reputation management is an ever-important aspect of a business’s success. While there are many ways to manage best and monitor your business, social media is an undeniably powerful tool you won’t want to discount. Using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, you can:

• Monitor what customers could be saying about you or competitors
• Join into conversations that could showcase your expertise or area of excellence
• Provide customer service to new and existing customers on platforms they engage on
• Encourage customers to share positive experiences with your brand or business

While you may not always be notified when a potential customer takes part in a conversation online that could be applicable, you can use social media’s native capabilities to search hashtags and competitors. This powerful social listening practice allows you to not only monitor conversations around your areas of expertise (and engage where applicable and appropriate). Still, it provides you with the opportunity to keep a close eye on your direct competitors – a valuable tool for many.

Communicate with Customers

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: social media is an extension of your customer service and an incredible opportunity to connect with your clientele where they actively engage. And as of 2020, your consumers are more than likely spending significantly more time doing just that. This past year didn’t just shake up the way we do business…it shifted the way we spend our time online. 51% of US adults reported a significant increase in their time spent scrolling social media platforms, a trend that is only expected to continue due to climb. As a result, businesses in 2021 will want to connect and communicate with their customers where the conversations happen – online.

Boost Lead Generation

Lead generation might not seem like an obvious benefit of social media usage but think again. Research by Ascend2 found that one of the most effective tactics used by businesses to improve the quality of their leads generation is social media – out ranking website personalization, email marketing, and even SEO / paid search. Social media offers several benefits to boost your lead generation, such as:

• Increasing visibility in search engines, raising the number of visitors who find your website during their search
• Increasing traffic to your website from conversations carried out through social networking sites
• Ample opportunity to learn more about your audience and even competitors

Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful tool to prioritize the growth of your business. While each platform offers unique advantages, a healthy online presence is paramount – regardless of the application you pick. While many marketers suggest diversifying your efforts and creating a presence across all available platforms, others argue that it’s crucial to determine exactly where your consumers – and desired conversations – are taking action. Ultimately the decision is yours, but should you desire greater guidance in your social media strategy, BrandRep is here to help. Our experts are incredibly well-versed in all things digital marketing and social media – ready and able to help you garner the greatest growth from all social media efforts. Don’t hesitate to contact a team member for the next steps today.